I usually don’t play in low value invitational slot tournaments, unless there is something extra going on at the same time. But when I received notice of the heads up tournament at the Palms for this past weekend, I decided to enter. The “extra” that drew me in was simple curiosity. I wanted to figure out how much the tournament was worth.
The prize pool was $40,000 for 128 players. Dividing the first by the second, you get an equity of $312.50 per person. But there were some unusual rules that changed things a bit.
In a heads up tournament with 128 players, in the first round on Saturday morning you have 64 matches where 64 people move on to the second round and 64 are out of the tournament. Sort of. After one more round, 32 people were left standing and the other 96 were out. Kinda.
At this point, each of the 96 players who lost in either the first or second round could re-buy for $50. A $50 price tag to re-buy into a tournament worth $300+ seemed like a no-brainer to me and many others. Many people did not re-buy — for a variety of reasons. I’m not sure how many re-bought, but the ones that did played another round or two Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday morning at 9 a.m. there was a “wild card” drawing of everybody no longer in the tournament. The formula for how many to select wasn’t announced beforehand. It was most likely done to “even out” the brackets because the casino couldn’t know in advance how many players would re-buy. There was one person selected this time to re-enter the tournament.
Several months ago they had a similar tournament. That time, few people re-bought and they called something like 10-15 names Sunday morning. One reason some players didn’t re-buy this time was because they expected to get in for free on Sunday. They were shocked to find out only one wild card was called at 9 a.m. Since players learn from their experiences, if they have a tournament like this again I suspect a higher percentage will re-buy.
There was still one last chance. At 11:30 a.m. they were going to call four more wild cards to go directly into the finals. It was four chances out of 112 (all of the original 128 entries minus the 16 people who had already qualified for the finals.)
The question that interested me was how do all of these special provisions (i.e. the re-buys and the wild cards) affect the equity?
The wild cards do not affect the equity simply because at the outset all players are equally eligible. They bring in no new money so they don’t affect the prize pool or the total number of players in the event.
If everybody who was eligible re-bought, this would be easy to figure out. Players know there’s a 3 out of 4 chance that they will pay an extra $50, which comes out to an average payment of $37.50. That means the equity is reduced to $275 per person. The casino still gives out $40,000 in prizes, but they collect $50 from 96 people (totaling $4,800) in this scenario. That means their net payout is $35,200 — to the total of 128 people.
In the real world, however, some players didn’t re-buy. Refusing to pay the $50, however, was “penny wise — pound foolish.” Having that extra chance to get back into the prize pool was worth far more than $50.
If the players who don’t re-buy are throwing away equity, where does that equity go? Does it just evaporate, go to the casino, or go to the other players?
It goes to the players who are willing to re-buy, if necessary. Perhaps the total equity was $300 apiece to the players willing to re-buy if necessary and $260 to the players who aren’t willing. These numbers are impossible to determine beforehand because you never know how many people are willing to re-buy.
Players are used to a slot tournament being totally luck. You hit the button and whatever happens, happens. This time, however, there was one significant element of skill. And that element was having the foresight to re-buy if necessary. And a lot of players failed the one and only skill test.
There were about 115 invited guests who entered the tournament. There were 30 or so un-invited guests who heard about it and applied for one of the last 13 places. The casino decided to “sell” these places for $50 apiece.
Some players were offended by this. “Why on earth should I have to pay fifty bucks and compete against players who paid nothing?” The reason, of course, was that the players who played nothing were more desirable customers from the casino’s point of view. That’s why they got the invitations in the first place.
One friend was trying to decide whether to pay the $50. I hadn’t done the analysis here at the time these players were given the choice to put up $50 or stay out of the event. If I had I would have told him that he was paying $50 for an equity of $300 if he was going to pay re-buy if necessary and $260 if he weren’t. These numbers imply that paying $50 to enter would have been a positive equity play. At the time I told him that I thought the tournament was worth a lot more than $50 — but I didn’t know how much more.
I think he decided to pass (or waited too long to make up his mind — which amounted to the same thing.) He couldn’t get past his silly ideas about the fairness of some people paying and some not paying. He should have been concentrating on whether or not it was worth it to pay $50 — NOT what deal anybody else was getting.
In this case the $650 in extra entry fee money went straight to the casino. It didn’t change the prize pool. (The actual number of people who bought in may have been a little more or less than I’m indicating here. I’m getting this information second-hand.)
I see no philosophical difference between a casino giving away “$35,000 plus all re-buy entry money goes to the players” and “$40,000 but the casino keeps all the re-buy money.” It’s just a different way of saying the same thing. It amounts to the same amount of money either way. But phrasing it the first way likely seems fairer to most players. If players like the first phrasing better, it makes sense for casinos to market it that way.